Gordie is 80!

March 28th, 2008

Excited for several reasons...

Darren McCarty is set to make his return to the Wings lineup tonight against St. Louis.

When No. 25 skates onto the ice tonight at Joe Louis Arena, it will be the first time in nearly a year that he has played in an NHL game and the first time in nearly four years since he has worn the winged wheel.

Zach and I had a chance to go to the driving range near our house last night, and he gave his new clubs (which he received from my Dad for Chistmas) their first breaking-in. He had a great time with me (and another guy sharing the stall with us) as we tried to work on his swing mechanics and such, and he really was doing well, even got one up in the air and about 60 yards out to one of the "greens" on the range. He was on the cell-phone with my Dad soon after asking for him take him to a "real golf course" this summer when they visit.

Zach plays in that All-Star weekend thing starting tomorrow morning, should be some fun stuff and a great experience for him.

March 25th, 2008

How to Compact Local Archive

Being a non-admin type and not very "into" or "up on" much that goes on with the mail and archiving in Notes, I was a little stuck when I did some work with my archive going back all the way to June of 2000, and cut that one off at the end of 2006, thus leaving me with a current archive much much smaller documents-wise.

What I was stuck with was a file that was about 21% used, but way too big (>1GB) because it hadn't been compacted. Tried to run the compact from the properties dialogs and got stymied. What to do?

This may not be new to many of you, but it was timely for me...

Found this answer to my general question inquired of LDD, and in less than 10 minutes I had a neat, tidy, 99% used Archive database. Thanks R Merry (whoever you are) for helping me out!

Close the client, then open a Command prompt and navigate to the notes directory, then use the ncompact command and specify the name of the database you wish to compact.

Assuming this works for any local file, not just an archive. Gee, I feel a little Admin-y today...but just a little ;-)

March 21st, 2008

Widget - worth it!

Got my first "guest chat" via my little google chat widget from a fellow named Todd Pickornik, who had stumbled across my blog and he asked me if I knew anyone in the lower Michigan area with Domino App Dev skills in need of a job.

I told him that I don't know of anyone personally at this time, but that he might want to contact Tom or Gregg about a posting on their Lotus Viral Marketing blog. Looks like he threw a few comments out there shortly thereafter, although they seem to be hanging off of some not-so-recent posts. Maybe this post will help them get a little more exposure.

Nice to be able to be a conduit in some small way of helping make a connection between a potential employer and a potential employee, especially in our Notes/Domino Application Development space.

March 18th, 2008

IdeaJam Support Wiki

March 14th, 2008

Awards and something else...

Zach's hockey awards were last night at the rink.

His "Mite" age group was the second group up, following the House program, and by then the place was already hopping (and very very LOUD). They never do seem to have a very adaquate sound system for this program, but nevertheless we were happy to be at it to watch him get his awards from the season. When it was our team's turn, Coach Matt and Coach Marc were up at the table with the whole teams' individual trophies and two of our team trophies/plaques from this year's exploits.

Zach was called up and received his individual participation trophy, the yearbook of the entire program, and then two patches, one for scoring a hat trick (3 goals in a game) and another for getting a playmaker (3 assists in a game).

He was very excited about all of it and wants to get the patches sewn on to his team jacket. Mom says she can do that...

Also... Friday of last week when we were heading down to Cinci, Zach had recieved a letter....

In it, he was invited to be a part of the 10th Annual All Star Extravaganza Hockey Exhibition on March 29th and 30th. This will include players chosen by their coaches from Northeast and Central Ohio was well as Western Pennsylvania!

Wow Z's an All Star!!! What an honor!!!

He will play at least 2 games with a mix of different kids in his playing level, and also participate in different parts of a skills competition, just like the NHL guys! We are so excited for him and are looking forward to seeing what this whole thing will be like.

Wings Matters

Wings to close out Yankee Stadium in an outdoor game against the Rangers? Thoughts? Do you think this will really happen?

Wings won their 4th game in a row against the Blackhawks last night. That brings the season series to 2-4 in favor of Chicago. Nice to be getting back in the winning swing with most of the regulars back, especially Captain Lidstrom. What's with Malts and Franzen becoming big scorers lately?

March 11th, 2008

A Crazy Trip, but we made it

If you were following my twitters late in the day on Friday, you know that we made a "some may say foolhardy" trip to Cincinnati during the "Storm of 2008".

My wife drove, as I would have been a nervous wreck trying to negotiate the various road conditions, back and forth from lanes with grooves, to totally covered lanes, to 5-10MPH near-standstills, to "choose your own lane adventure because there are no lanes to be seen".

What is with southern Ohio and their inability to handle winter weather?

But, she negotiated it all well enough to get us down there in 6.5 hours when it is usually a 4 hour trip. We did have to re-route ourselves, as when we got close, and tried to make it up the first steep hill in their area, we barely made it to the first crest with our wheels spinning to get traction, we called my sister-in-law's house and got some more easily negotiable directions.

The main reason we went down was the my sister-in-law's family and my wife's parents paid for Katie to go to the live presentation of High School Musical on stage. She went with Aunt Beth, cousin Ellie and one of Ellie's friends. She had a great time, so it was all worth it.

We did get to spend some time out in the snow on the hills in back of the houses, and when I get a chance I'll post some of the pictures we captured of all the cousins enjoying some sled time.

I drove back all the way on Sunday evening and the roads were totally clear and dry all the way back, what a difference 36-48 hours makes.

Update 3/14 - finally got the pics copied off the camera, see above...

March 4th, 2008

A win (finally), and two pending returns

It was nice to see the Wings have a decent game finally against Buffalo on Sunday night. With the 6pm start Zach was able to be up for the whole game, which he was happy about. Good to see Kronner get back in the thick of things on D, Stuart - the new guy - making some big hits, and some seconday (non-top-line) scoring from Drake, Maltby, Franzen and Filpula.

Looks like McCarty could be up with the Wings as early as the 11th against Chicago. Looking forward to seeing where Mac fits in on this team, and what he can bring to the table. Should be a fun ride to the end of the season.

March 4th, 2008

Slow loading today...hmm

Anyone notice my blog taking a long time to load past the "Add this blog to my Technorati Favorites" badge/image? Are others experiencing similar slow loads on their blogs if you have links out to Technorat ...it's been like that all morning...

March 3rd, 2008

Finally a part of the group

It was nice this weekend to finally get on to the im.bleedyellow.com sametime server and see where everyone's been congregating. Up to this point my main line of connectivity to some but not all of you has been my gtalk list or @replies on twitter. I'm running a 7.5 beta 2 version (I think) so it looks a little stange visually, but looks like its working ok, and was enough to chat with Chris Whisonant for a few minutes on Friday.

I will be still limited to accessing the Yellowbleeders group at home as I can't get to the server at the office...and that's probably really a good thing...

March 2nd, 2008

Heartbreaking Overtime

As you can tell by the headline, or if you've been following my twitter-ings, Zach's Mustangs team lost in overtime to North Olmsted this morning 5-4. After going up 1-0 in the first period on Wyatt's first goal, North Olmsted nabbed a 2-1 lead heading into the 3rd. The score was tied at 2-2, 3-3, and then 4-4 on further goals by Wyatt (he ended up with a hat trick) and Zach. We were very happy to have made it into the overtime frame after coming back 3 times. It looked like we were going to pull it out as we were putting alot of presure on our opponents at their end, but the little guy who had scored 3 of their first 4 goals potted the game sealer with a lifted shot over Blake's shoulder.

Our guys (and us) were pretty disappointed at thre outcome, but we told them that they all have lots of hockey to look forward to in the coming years, and it's amazing that they did as well as they did this first year of travel hockey, as most of them played house (or nothing) before the beginning of the season.

Congratulations a wonderful year Mite3! Looking forward to your accomplishments in the coming years and even this spring, (a whole bunch of the team will still be together for a 10 game run for spring league starting in a couple weeks).